


Things You Said Over the Phone

by Beth Harker (Beth_Harker)



Category: Newsies!: the Musical - Fierstein/Menken
Genre: Fluff, M/M, Modern AU, Romantic Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-25
Updated: 2015-10-25
Packaged: 2019-09-29 21:20:01
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,375
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17211161
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Beth_Harker/pseuds/Beth%20Harker
Summary: Davey calls Crutchie on his third day of college. Unabashedly romantic Dutchie fluff.





	Things You Said Over the Phone

**Author's Note:**

> (Semi-modern AU. Let’s say 1992, because that’s a significant year, and it’s the best excuse I have for Davey not having a cell phone.)

It was his third day of college. It was going alright, Davey guessed. Things were fine, sort of. There were two more days of orientation to go before classes started, and Davey had finagled a schedule that would let him sleep until at least nine o'clock every morning, so that was something to look forward to.

It was just very very far from home, and Davey had never wanted the go to Wisconsin in the first place. He’d known that his family wasn’t in a position to turn down a full scholarship to such a good school, so he’d mustered all his bravery, seized the opportunity, and gone, but he wasn’t sure how he was going to last the month, much less a whole semester away from his friends and family.

The other students were weird. Or more likely he was weird and they were normal. Almost everybody had come into this just as alone as Davey had, and everybody was nice enough as they tried to get a feel for each other, but just looking at them made Davey’s tongue go all thick and useless in his mouth, like it hadn’t been made to form words. Sometimes his heart beat too fast, and his fingers felt numb, and yeah he knew why he felt like that and what it meant, but he’d thought he’d made progress over the last few years, and it hurt to realize that he was backtracking.

And these other kids… adults really, since they were all over eighteen and out of high school… It was like they were auditioning for friendships. They had a couple more days to show others that they were engaging, interesting, fun-loving, beautiful people, and then their groups would be formed for the next four years, and Davey would be on his own because he’d missed try-outs while he was trying to pull himself together.

In the afternoon, Davey bought a phone card to try and call Crutchie, but he couldn’t figure out the way the campus phone lines worked. You could call other dorm rooms for free, but you needed some kind of special code to dial out.

In the evening Davey’s roommate was having a party, and after half an hour of loud noises and worrying that an RA would kick down the door and arrest him for underage drinking even though he hadn’t touched a drop, Davey decided to explore campus.

That’s how he discovered that the cafeteria building wasn’t locked at night, and that it had pay phones.

Davey punched the code on his phone card into the pay phone, squinting to see the numbers in the dark. The air around him smelled vaguely like a public washroom, which was sort of disconcerting for a cafeteria building. He hoped that it was just the cleaning products that they used. Somebody was running a vacuum somewhere, and the distant whir of it assured Davey that things here couldn’t possibly be that unsanitary. He dialed Crutchie’s number from memory.

“Hello?” Said a sleepy voice after two rings. Crutchie’s mother. Davey frowned. It was past midnight, and he should have thought of that. Stupid.

“Um… Yeah…. Hi. It’s Davey. Sorry, guess I um… Lost track of time. I’ll call back in the morning.”

“Davey? Is everything okay?”

Davey nodded, then remembered that wouldn’t come across over the phone. He swallowed. “I lost track of time,” he repeated. “I’ll call back later. But not later tonight. Tomorrow. But not too early tomorrow. What I’m trying to say is I’ll call back at a…um… reasonable hour.”

“No, it’s fine. Charlie has been wanting to hear from you. We all miss you. I’ll go wake him up. Don’t worry. He’ll be thrilled.”

Silence on the other end of the line, or near silence. Crutchie had a dog that never shut up, and a few yaps, though muffled and far away, kept Davey company and assured him that he hadn’t been hung up on.

“Heya Davey. Is that you?”

“Yeah. It’s me. Hi Crutchie. I’m… How are you?”

“Good. Good. Real happy to hear from you. You’re a sight for sore ears, that’s for sure.”

“A sight for sore ears,” Davey repeated quietly, liking the phrase. He liked Crutchie a lot. He loved the sound of his voice and the way he talked. The smile that had spread over Davey’s face was bright and instantaneous.

“School’s going pretty good,” Crutchie said. “Smalls is doing great as editor for the paper.”

“I knew she would be.”

“Yeah. We all miss you. Jack and Katherine too. It ain’t the same, but we’ve got some new freshmen, and we’re still carryin’ the banner. Hate to say it, but we’re all a bunch of lousy sensationalists without you to keep us in line.”

“That’s why you gotta keep them in line, Crutch, like you promised you would.”

“You found anybody new to keep you in line yet?” Crutchie asked, with a nervous little laugh that made Davey role his eyes.

“Yeah. You know me. I definitely haven’t spent the last seventy-two hours avoiding everyone. In fact, I’ve kissed three boys and a girl since coming here, and found a new life partner. His name is Jean-Luc and…”

“Jean-Luc Picard?” Crutchie teased.

“No. Jean-Luc Wilde. Maybe you’ve heard of him.”

“Now you sound like Jack.”

“Do not. I sound like myself when I’m being very very sarcastic. Jack would’ve thought up an entire scandalous life story for Jean- Luc Wilde in the time it took me to come up with the name. You know that I love you and there’s not even the remotest iota of a possibility that I’m going to replace you, right?”

Crutchie chuckled, “I know. I love you too.”

“Remember that poem I was reading to you? The Four Quartets? And that line, ‘the wonder that I feel is easy, yet ease is cause for wonder’…”

Davey knew that Crutchie would remember. Davey was awful when it came to going on and on about stories and poems and things, and Crutchie always managed to remain patient and interested. Davey must have repeated that one line, ease is cause for wonder, to Crutchie half a dozen times (and a dozen times too loudly) in an attempt to explain it to him, and though Davey hadn’t been able to arrange his words into something that would convey it well enough, he thought that Crutchie understood.

“You doing alright over there, Davey?” Crutchie asked, and just like Davey had known how his psychologist would diagnose the racing heartbeat and sweaty palms that accompanied all of his social interactions in this new place, he also knew that Crutchie was precisely and intimately aware of what he was asking after when he asked Davey if he was alright.

“I-I’m doing my best,” Davey said. He paused. Stuttering when he was talking to Crutchie of all people was always a bad sign. He bit his lip. Crutchie would wait for him to be ready to continue. “It’s just an enormous relief to talk to you.”

“It feels good to talk to you too,” Crutchie said. “It’s really good in fact. Hey, why don’t you call me as often as you like. I’ll keep you filled in on all the gossip and hard-hitting New York news, and you keep me filled in on cow-tipping, cheddar cheese, and you.”

“Alright. I’ll do that. You have to take care of yourself while I’m gone.”

“And you gotta do the same. And if you gotta take some medicine or something… just don’t beat yourself up for it, you got that?”

“Okay,” said Davey. “I might do that actually. I’ll see how things go once classes start.” He glanced at his watch. “On the topic of you taking care of yourself, maybe you better start with going back to sleep. It’s getting late, and we both have school tomorrow. Or, you know, you have school and I have some kind of welcome workshop about drinking laws, and how to tell a condom from a syllabus and the appropriate uses of each of these things.”

“Goodnight Davey. Let me know what you learn.”

“I’ll write you an editorial on it for old times sake. Night. Love you.”

“Love you too. Bye.”


End file.
